BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

Years later, I was appointed a member of the Goldman Committee which was mandated to oversee the academic program of the medical school and make recommendations. 43 This committee, formally named the International Academic Review Committee (IARC), was initially comprised of three American and three Israeli Professors. The Goldman Committee’s task would be to convene once a year or year-and-a-half, to monitor and comment on the academic operations of the school and make recommendations as to where to invest the fund’s money. I joined the committee a short time after it was established and have served as a member for 17 years. Each time the committee convened, I have participated in its deliberations: I have viewed it my duty to preserve the medical school’s original vision and ensure it will not be lost. Thus, I’ve had the privilege of following the workings of the medical school in Beer Sheva as the medical director of Clalit; as a participant in its founding; as director-general of Clalit, and afterwards as a member of the Goldman Committee. Consequently, I think I am in a good position to sum up the outcomes of the struggle to establish the school with a candid look on this project, now in its fifth decade, and wish to do so for posterity. Today, 43 years after its founding, I can say with candor that the medical school in Beer Sheva is excellent, among the best in the country, a pride and joy. The existence of a medical school in Beer Sheva has a far-reaching impact on the Ben-Gurion University and the Negev as a whole. This is reflected in the fact that in recent years, those who aspire to develop the Galilee understood that the best way to leverage such a process is to establish a medical school in Tzfat. 44 BGU’s medical school has played a major role in raising the level of Soroka Hospital and even has been central to its very existence. I can’t image it would have been possible to develop Soroka Hospital, today a major hospital in Israel, without the ability to provide Soroka with department heads and staff physicians with high level academic credentials drawn from this sister institution under the same roof. The school also impacts on the quality of other hospitals associated with it, including the government-run mental health hospital in Beer Sheva, the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, and more recently, much to my pleasure, affiliation with the new Assuta Hospital in Ashdod. Prof. Prywes’ concept that one person would serve as dean of the medical school and director of Clalit’s Negev region didn’t last. The first three deans -- Moshe Prywes, Prof. Lechaim Naggan, 45 and Prof. Shimon Glick -- indeed filled both posts. On paper, the fourth dean Prof. Shimon Moses also did so; 46 but in practice this combination was not so marked. The reason: Such a setup was not natural: Clalit is an institution that deals with health services, while the hospital deals with medical education. Although there is an interface between the two, they are not identical. But today there are physicians here and there who have realized this principle 43 The donation that established the “Goldman Committee,” formally named the International Academic Review Committee, or IARC, was made after the deaths of both Irving Goldman and his wife, Joyce. It was part of a large donation to BGU made by the Joyce and Irving Goldman Foundation in New York whose board members were the three children of Joyce and Irving Goldman – Dorian, Katja, and Lloyd Goldman. The decision to direct the large gift to BGU’s medical school was determined by discussions with the leadership of the university about where the greatest need was. That, in turn, led to the naming of the medical school as the Joyce and Irving Goldman Medical School at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; and it led to the establishment of the IARC. See also Schoenbaum S.C., et al, “A view from the Outside.” In, Sustaining Change in Medical Education, (Benor, D. E., ed.) Ben-Gurion University Press 2005, pp.588-604. 44 The Bar-Ilan University Azrieli Faculty of Medicine in Tzfat (Safed) established in 2011. 45 Prof. Lechaim Naggan (1936 - ), born in Tel-Aviv, studied medicine first in Geneva, Switzerland, completing them at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also holds MPH and DrPH degrees in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health; and he served for many years in the IDF, where he was the deputy commander of the Medical Corps from 1972-1974. He became chair of the epidemiology and health services evaluation unit at BGU in 1976, was acting dean in 1979-80 and then the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS) from 1982-1986. Within the FOHS he developed the Basic Sciences Division and the Graduates Program; and he championed family medicine. From 1991-1998, he was BGU’s vice president and dean for research and development. In addition to his activities at BGU, he has long taught epidemiology in summer programs at Johns Hopkins University (USA). 46 Prof. Shimon Moses (1926-2021) was born in Germany and immigrated to Israel in 1938. In the Second World War, he fought in the Jewish Brigade, and then studied medicine in Leiden (Holland) and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He specialized in pediatrics. In 1961, he moved to Beer Sheva where he founded a pediatrics department at Soroka Hospital, at the time the Central Hospital for the Negev. Prof. Moses researched and published widely on pediatric metabolic diseases and was among those who pioneered research into familial dysautonomia. As dean of BGU’s Faculty of Health Sciences (1990-1994), he led establishment of a new medical library at the hospital and took first steps towards developing plans and design of a new building for the school of medicine on the hospital campus. He also led the campaign to absorb fifty immigrant doctors from the former Soviet Union at the Soroka Medical Center that was accompanied by a special assistance package. He retired in 1994, and up until 2015 directed research of Dead Sea treatments.

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